Spinning hard disk drives will absolutely become the worst bottleneck of your workflow by far if you use them for your computer’s operating system, or for your Lightroom catalog (.LRCAT file) itself. To begin with, there are a few things you absolutely must have: First, your computer should have an SSD hard drive, period. If you edit a lot of photos in Lightroom, then you absolutely do need to understand how to pick all the right computer parts. These two ways in which Lightroom speed can be measured are the categories of passive tasks and active tasks. Unless, of course, you spend the most money possible and buy literally ALL the best computer parts, period! The question of how to speed up Adobe Lightroom (both Creative Cloud/CC and “Lightroom Classic, mind you) actually has two measurable categories of speed, and unfortunately, they don’t necessarily always go together when you are deciding which computer parts to buy. In this article, we are going to explain a little bit more about what makes a computer fast for photo editing workflows, and we will pick PC computer parts for optimal Lightroom performance! Passive Tasks VS Active Tasks | Adobe Lightroom Speed, Explained However, if you process thousands, or even tens of thousands of photos every single week or month, heck, anyone who spends time in Lightroom almost daily…pay attention! Getting exactly the right components could literally save you hours of time each month, or even weekly or daily! Buy any “ fast” computer with an SSD drive, any multi-core, multi-thread CPU, at least 16 GB RAM, and a decent graphics card, and you’ll be happy! When you’re editing a few dozen or even a few hundred photos, Lightroom’s speed may not be worth obsessing over.

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